Particles in Slovak and Czech. System and Corpus Analysis

The youngest word class type used to arouse great interest and discussions when entering the grammar; in some countries (e. g. in Germany) particles have been an object of systematic research. However, many other languages still lack a complex description of particles as a class on its own - they represent an appropriate material also for comparative researches. Differences in functioning and theoretical treatment of particles have been present in typologically different languages but they can emerge also in related languages, even in the case of Slovak and Czech. Lexicographical and grammar descriptions of these languages provide only small sets of particles (in Slovak roughly amounting to 400, in Czech exceeding 200) and are usually divided by authors into small groups and further on into even smaller subgroups. Due to specific features as well as to paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations with other language or speech phenomena even one particle or a couple of them or a narrowly defined group of particles can become an object of individual scientific and research projects. Step by step, our thesis presents the development of attitudes towards particles as an independent word class in general and in Russian linguistics in particular, grammar descriptions of particles in Slovak, Czech and other..